


Alive and Wells

by ottermo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Implausible Survival Theories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5449919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently, coming back from the dead is no big deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alive and Wells

**Author's Note:**

> I've just been drowning in a vortex of Wells feelings for the past 72 hours or so. Somehow, the result has been this strange fusion of crack and seriousness, but please, don't apply too much logic to Wells's comeback story. It is a fragile veil.
> 
> A better and more thought-out version of how Wells isn't dead will materialise at some point in the form of a collaboration with eomerking (who is all kinds of wonderful), but for now, I've...made something up.
> 
> It makes as much sense as you want it to.

 

 

He had been expecting a little more fanfare, to be honest.

Not that Wells likes being centre of attention – actually, he kind of hates it. Ever since the time when he was five, and someone from Factory spat at his father in the Unity Day parade and it hit Wells instead – the first time Clarke ever saw him cry, actually – he’d been wary of spotlight, and yet more or less stalked by it his entire life. 

So in some ways low-key is his thing, and it’s certainly no time for fireworks and parades, but… he’s still anticipating a little bit more than Clarke’s raised eyebrows and dismissive gaze.

“You again,” she says, as if she’d seen him last five minutes ago, not almost a year. She sounds fond, to be fair, but not overjoyed, not relieved, not celebrating.

Wells feels a little bit like he’s been punched in the gut, if he’s honest, knocked down by the sheer force of her disinterest. “Er…yeah.”

She returns to the map she’d been poring over. Wells stands in a sort of daze, not sure where to put himself, not sure why he walked for about seven hours and then snuck through the entire camp under the cover of darkness just so that Clarke would be the first person to see him – before his father, even, damn it – only to get this level of reaction. Zero.

He watches her work for a moment or two, captivated just by the sight of her, even if she does look so much older, so much more…worn. Beautiful, still. Just less illuminated. “Clarke,” he says, finally, “Aren’t you going to…I mean…”

He stretches his arms out a little.

She actually _rolls her eyes_.

“Come on, Wells, I might hallucinate sometimes but I’m not that far gone.” She smiles slightly. It’s a sad smile. Before Wells can work out how to reply, or what she even means, Clarke stands up and swipes at the air in front of him, as if to prove whatever point she thinks she’s making. When she swipes back the other way, she extends her hand forwards just slightly, and this time it hits him. The physical contact that she seems not to be expecting hits her like a lightning bolt.  

And he swears she almost jumps out of her skin. Her mouth falls open. Her hands fly to her temples so fast he worries she’ll catch her eye, and he notices scars on her face now for the first time. But there’s no time to ask where they’re from, because now Clarke’s stuck between sobbing and shrieking and she cannons into him. Wells manages not to fall backwards, just about, and wraps his arms tight around her, breathes her in. Even as she’s trembling with the shock and whatever else, she’s finally solid and real and for the first time in months, he actually _feels_ as alive as he knows he is.

It’s minutes in the plural before Clarke can actually string a sentence, and when she does, it’s still a great rush of words. Apologies, explanations, _I missed you so much that I’ve imagined you there too many times to count_ \- he holds on to that phrase especially – questions, so many questions. “How are you _alive_? I _saw_ them—” She trails off and shudders, grabs both of his hands to examine them. Wells waggles one of the finger-stumps at her, with a rueful smile.

“Yeah, that took some getting used to. Had to learn to write all over again.”

She shakes her head, new tears of happiness still making tracks on her cheeks, but she seems not to notice them. “You were _dead_ , Wells!”

He frowns. “Only for a couple of weeks, or….it…Clarke, did they never _tell_ you?”

“Tell me what? Nobody had to tell me anything, Wells, I saw your body buried, what was there to tell—”

Wells swallows, hard. This is…again, not really what he’d been expecting to find on his return. “They were supposed to just wait a while until everything had cooled off with Murphy and Charlotte and then tell you, just you, that I was safe—”

“Who was?” her voice is frantic, her grip on his hands gets even tighter. “ _Who,_ Wells?”

“The guy that was supposed to take over my watch – Derek – he was the one who found me – Charlotte had run off by that time but I could just about explain to him that it wasn’t an outside attack, no need to raise the alarm, and we— he got this other kid, Connor, and they patched me up as best as they could and got me to this sort of – cave place before sunrise.” Wells guides Clarke back over to her chair as he talks, and perches on her map table in the absence of a second seat. “Then they were supposed to go back, dig up one of the kids who died on the dropship and re-bury him quick and ugly enough that nobody saw it wasn’t me. It sounded too stupid for anyone to believe, but…Charlotte would have tried again, or someone else would have, Clarke. We figured it was worth a shot. I was basically Earth’s Most Hated.”

Clarke scoffs at this, but seems not to be able to conjure any words, lets him continue.

“I wanted them to tell you the truth right away, but I don’t know, they had some kind of idea that someone would see through it if your reaction wasn’t authentic – I know! I’m sorry!” he falters as she scowls at him, “But they were supposed to leave it just a couple of weeks, enough for me to either get far enough away or be killed by whatever was out there, they didn’t care which, I don’t think, but…then they were supposed to tell you, Clarke. Why didn’t they?”

Something seems to dawn on Clarke suddenly. “Derek and Connor, you said?”

Wells nods. “Yeah.”

She groans. “Wells, they – we banished Murphy the next day, or, soon after, anyway – and he got captured by Grounders, but then they let him come back, to infect us all with a virus… Derek was the first one it killed. And Connor…” she frowns. “I’m not actually sure Murphy had nothing to do with that one. But he died too.”

Wells takes this in. He hides his eyes briefly behind one hand. “And my secret with them. Those poor guys.”

Clarke doesn’t fill the silence that follows, just stares blankly past him. Wells wonders how many people she’s lost since he last saw her – one less, now that he’s back, but enough for several lifetimes, he suspects.

Then she seems to snap out of it. She gets up from her chair and swipes the handwritten maps onto the floor, sitting next to him on the tabletop. She presses as close to him as she possibly can. “You are _real_ ,” she says, breathless with wonder all over again.

“As real as real can be,” he confirms, slipping an arm around her.

“But where have you been all this time? Why are you back _now_? We’re kind of in the middle of a war,” Clarke says, a little too breezily for Wells’s liking.

“Well…” he wonders how to begin it, decides to skip the first few weeks of despair and infection and delirious fever and jump straight to, “I ran into a clan of Grounders who…I think they thought I was the reincarnated form of their leader, or something, so until they found out that I definitely _wasn’t_ that, they let me stay and fixed me up…then when they worked out that I was actually an imposter they banished me to this little network of caves, which had a little stream of fresh water and some rats, so I was fine there for a while…there was a lot more leading up to me killing my first rat, obviously, but I’m just doing the highlights…” Clarke chuckles lightly, and Wells feels the tiny vibration of it against his chest. It’s the most beautiful feeling in the world, he realises. “And then from there I met another set of Grounders who thought they’d managed to capture me from the first set, so I think they sent a lot of ransom notes and got a bit annoyed that the others didn’t want me back, so they figured I wasn’t worth much and banished me from there, too.”

He leaves out the less light-hearted details, the reasons he’s got some scars to compare with hers. Later, maybe he’ll tell her what keeps him awake at night. Not now.

“So I just sort of wandered for a bit until I met another group, only this lot weren’t a clan, they were a smaller bunch of merchants – and they didn’t really care where I was from, since I was strong enough to pull a cart, so… I was kind of just…with them. Ever since. We were actually camped quite near Mount Weather for a while, but then a million Grounder armies converged on it, so we ran for it.”

Clarke makes a half-irritated, half-happily-disbelieving sound. “That was us, too! We must have been so close!”

“Ships in the night,” Wells agrees. “It wasn’t until we were weeks out that we heard from another clan that the Skai Kru had been involved there too. But it sounded like an alliance had broken up?”

“Yeah, just a little,” Clarke says darkly. Wells doesn’t push it.

“So we’ve done a massive semi-circle back this way, trading and swapping stuff, and generally trying to keep out of Skai Kru’s way, except I was obviously listening for any news of where you guys were. But two days ago, Aressa – she was the leader of our group – said we were heading West immediately, switching trade routes with another group of merchants, and we’d be going on pretty much a perpendicular from where I knew you were, so – I thought, if I carried on with them, I’d never get the chance to get back to you. To everyone. They’re just getting further and further away, and I – remember, Clarke, I thought you knew I was alive and would be looking for me – I thought I better stay at a reasonable distance if that was ever going to happen. And it’s been so long since I was injured, my hand isn’t weak any more, I thought it was worth trying to strike out on my own, if it meant getting back to you.”

Clarke nuzzles against his shoulder. “And I greeted you by thinking I was hallucinating. Nice.”

“Yeah, well. I never said I liked you for your niceness.” 

She laughs, but it dies quickly. “God, Wells, there’s so much to tell you as well. It’s been – insane. It’s not even over yet. We’re at war for, like – the fourth time now – and everything’s a mess and Bellamy and Octavia have ended up on opposite sides and I don’t know how anything’s holding together anymore, really. Your dad’s on some magical quest with Murphy – I know, but it’s true – and nobody’s heard from him in months.”

Wells’s breath catches slightly in his throat, and Clarke grimaces. “Sorry. But when he does come back, you’ve got to make him tell you the story of how he got to the ground, it’s…I don’t even know how he managed to not die. That’s how I know he’s coming back again this time. Basically he’s indestructible at this point.”

“Runs in the family,” Wells quips, trying to push worry over his father aside. Good thing he’d searched the camp for Clarke first instead.

“I can’t believe you’re back,” Clarke says, dreamy again. She shifts away so she can look at him face-on. “I missed you _so_ much. For a while afterwards I was such a mess that I ignored it, but it got so bad after Mount Weather, on top of everything else… I couldn’t do any of it anymore. I couldn’t be here, with everyone I’d killed for, slaughtered a whole community for, and not…not even have _you_ to show for it.”

Wells ignores the lump in his throat, resolutely.

“So I left, for a while…did a bunch of things I’m not proud of, and some that I,” she pauses, grins, “Am super proud of, and… so now I’m back. Trying to piece enough of this place back together so that we can actually fight a war, and not kill each other first. It’s…not going well.”

“I’d argue that it’s going much better, as of tonight.”

She grins, despite her previously stony expression. “Full of yourself as ever, Jaha.”

“You bet.”

She throws herself forward into his arms again, and Wells is very afraid for a second that they’ll both fall sideways off the table. He rests his chin on her head. If he sits still enough, he thinks he can feel her heartbeat, unless it’s just his own, in overdrive for the both of them. “You’re really here,” she says, muffled into his chest.

Every time she says it, he believes it some more. “And so are you,” he whispers back.

“Does anyone else know you’re here?”

“No. I came straight to you.”

She makes a tiny, pleased sound he’d forgotten existed, but brings back her six-year-old self, clear as day. “You got past the guards?”

“The guard was Jasper, it wasn’t hard.”

“Oh, God, Jasper. He’s got some storytelling to do.”

“I’m guessing everyone does.”

“Too bad,” Clarke says determinedly, pulling back to look at him. “I’m not sharing you.”

Wells smiles. “Oh, but you were always so good at sharing.”

“Only ever with you. Why do you think I never made any other friends on the Ark?”

“I always figured it was your winning personality that kept people away.”

It’s almost surreal how easy it is to fall into childhood banter, as though the rest of the world doesn’t even exist, as though they’re not at war and he hasn’t been dead for a year and they don’t both have train tracks of scar tissue and permanent bags of nightmare under their eyes. It’s surreal, but it’s perfect.

She reaches up to kiss him on the cheek. “I thought I’d never stop missing you, my whole life.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

This time, when she rolls her eyes, it’s just what he’s expecting. Fanfare be damned, Wells Jaha _lives_. Her hands in his are reward enough.

 

 

 


End file.
